“Beep! Beep! Beep!” You think to yourself “Whoever decided the frequency of that alarm clock buzzer should be shot.” This is how most of us wake in the morning.

Then, after slamming the off button, you sluggishly slink out to brew the morning’s coffee and boot your computer to check the traffic and weather for the day. As you mindlessly select Beat The Traffic from your “favorites” menu to check the morning traffic, you notice something different on the traffic map. What are those yellow globes? Wait a second, Beat The Traffic now has weather on their site! Sweet! Now your lazy sleep self thinks how awesome it will be to conserve energy by no longer needing to check another website for your daily weather information. Maybe you can set your clock 5 minutes later…

Now no need to drown us in thank you comments (well, if you must) but our programmers (thanks Edgar and Briac!) just made your life that much easier. Using data from Custom Weather, Inc.’s over 4,500 weather stations across the US, you are now able to see small icons representing the current weather conditions and temperatures right on your local traffic map, as well as access to a seven day forecast!

How to use it

This weather feature offers more than meets the eye. The most obvious use is to check current weather conditions, with icons and temperatures that appear directly on the map. If for some reason you don’t see the weather icons, you might have them turned off. To turn them back on, simply left click to check the “Weather” box at the top of the map. This also allows you to turn them off if you don’t wish to use the weather feature (though not recommended as the “look out the window” test is rather inaccurate).

You can also view more information about the current weather information by rolling your cursor over the icon, at which point a text box will appear with the location, descriptive details, humidity level, wind speed/direction, atmospheric pressure, and dewpoint temperature.

Another exciting feature is the seven day forecasts. Left click on the weather icon in the area you are interested in and a seven day forecast will display at the top left of your screen. The forecasts include the high and low temperatures for the day, a description of the predicted conditions, and the chance of precipitation. What more information could you need?

So I hope you are as excited as we are about this new weather feature and we welcome any suggestions and comments about its design as we finish developing it. Also, keep your eye out for the future addition of weather on Beat The Traffic 3D for the use of your local TV broadcasters.